Anyway, here begins the much-awaited (by someone, maybe) posting of my thesis. Because of its length, I'll be posting it in chunks, beginning here with the introduction. That in itself is quite lengthy, although it'll look longer here than it actually is because it's double-spaced. I also wrote a dedication/acknowledgements page, but I won't post that here because it identifies pretty much all of my family and friends, and I don't know that all of them would want that.
I'll let the rest speak for itself.
A thesis, in a body of work, is a statement which asserts its purpose and meaning. It effectively and cohesively lays out the major points the work goes on to cover. My thesis, then, is my statement. This work is my assertion; this work is straightforward, raw, and honest. This work is me.
My original goal was to create a short autobiographical novel in verse. I’d seen it done before, mostly in young adult fiction; I had Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust and Meg Kearney’s The Secret of Me in mind. I wanted to write in one volume what was at the time scattered across journals and memories dating as far back as 1995, when I was seven. The longer I thought about it, the more grandiose the project became in my head. I was determined to write everything. I envisioned a chronological arrangement of essentially every moment I had deemed worthy of being written down at the time of its occurrence. I would pick out the major themes I found in my journals – my struggles with my mother, the emergence of my sexuality, mental health and therapy, and my feelings of loneliness and friendlessness – and revolve the work around them. Knowing that therapy had played a major part in my development, I planned to get copies of all of my various therapists’ notes and observations on me and work those into the piece.
However, somewhere between a thirty-page limit, therapists not returning my phone calls, and sixteen credit hours, my work began to shift focus. I floundered for a little while, but I was determined to keep writing and see what came out on the page. Instead of writing my life – which, even at a young twenty-one years was an overwhelming undertaking, especially without any particular focus – I decided to write poetic “snapshots” of moments and memories from my past. I believe I became an adult at age eighteen, and I wanted to keep the work centered on what I deemed childhood and adolescence, so the poems in my thesis are written from my point of view at various ages between about seven and eighteen. I have tried to keep the integrity of the original project by keeping everything chronological and by paying attention to those same themes mentioned above; I put more emphasis on them than on the other “snapshots.”
The piece evolved into something even more when I realized how deeply psychological it was. One of the first poems I wrote I titled “Bloodletting,” and it is about self-harm and cutting and the feelings I had at various stages during my struggle. Another poem is called “Axis I: Panic” and it intersperses notes from my psychiatrist’s initial assessment of me with what I can remember of a violent panic attack I had when I was about eight years old. (“Axis I” refers to the first of the five axes of diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness.) As a psychology minor and a hopeful therapist in the making, this was too good of an opportunity to pass up.
There is a school of psychotherapy known as Adlerian therapy (named for Alfred Adler, 1870-1937) which is particularly concerned with the development of people as unique individuals with subsequently unique perceptions of reality. “From the Adlerian perspective,” explains Gerald Corey in his textbook Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy, “objective reality is less important than how we interpret reality and the meanings we attach to what we experience” (99). One aspect of the Adlerian modality of psychotherapy is the exploration of “private logic,” or “the concepts about self, others, and life that constitute the philosophy on which an individual’s lifestyle is based.” It “includes our convictions and beliefs that get in the way of social interest and that do not facilitate useful, constructive belonging” (Corey 106). A huge part of our private logic is based on things we were taught as children. An Adlerian psychotherapist implores the client to look back at early recollections, those memories that may have factored into the shaping of our personal logic and the “basic mistakes” with which we perceive the world now that we’re older:
Adler reasoned that out of the millions of early memories we might have we select those special memories that project the essential convictions and even the basic mistakes of our lives. Early recollections are a series of small mysteries that can be woven together and provide a tapestry that leads to an understanding of how we view ourselves, how we see the world…[they] cast light on the ‘story of our life’ because they represent metaphors for our current views. From a series of early recollections, it is possible to get a clear sense of our mistaken notions, present attitudes, social interests, and possible future behavior. (Corey 111)
While certainly not all of the “snapshots” in this body of work are particularly early recollections, they all still helped shape who I am today. Each moment of my life plays some role in determining other moments of my life later on. And furthermore, with the Adlerian ideas of “basic mistakes” and “early recollections” in mind, one can look at the poems written from my point of view at seven or eight and see how they influenced the moments I write about at sixteen or seventeen. In simple terms, each of the poems in this body of work provides some insight into why I am who I am.
My process in writing this work has been hard to pin down. I have trouble simply sitting down and pounding out work in any discipline, and this was no exception. I am a shameless procrastinator – probably because I am also a terrified perfectionist – and sometimes I end up staring at the computer screen for a good fifteen minutes before I come far enough out of my head to write even a few words. What’s more, it’s hard to open up a notebook or a laptop and think, “I’m going to be creative now!” and hope for some poetic wisdom to fall onto the page. I had sudden bursts of inspiration that helped me write poems like “Bloodletting,” “Mazel Tov,” and “Sweet Sixteen.” Other times it would be three in the morning and I’d suddenly feel like writing after not having wanted to all day, and I would be pleasantly surprised by what I produced. Still other times I forced myself to sit and write, sometimes using exercises from books like Robin Behn’s The Practice of Poetry. On a more technical level, I generally write the way I “see” the poem in my head, and I edit as I write. For example, I knew “Mazel Tov” was going to be about how I came to see religion both in and out of the context of my family, but I didn’t know exactly what it was going to be about. Other lines existed in it at some point that I took out before the poem fully existed. Many times I chose to defy Word Processor and change the case of letters at the beginnings of lines to make them grammatically correct, but in this case I liked the look of each line starting with a capital letter. I decided to humor myself and see how it looked the “proper” way, but I didn’t like it. I saw and heard the poem the way it is on the page now. On the other hand, I knew from the start that “Bloodletting” was going to be a sestina, so I altered my process to adhere to its strict form.
While I enjoy experimenting with poetic forms, almost all of the poems in this body of work are written in free verse. “Axis III: Neurology” is a sonnet and “Bloodletting” is a sestina, but those are the only exceptions. I felt that in order to keep the voices of each poem as close to authentic as possible, they should be written – and thus sound – the way I would speak. (Obviously “A Calculated Move” isn’t written exactly the way I would have spoken at age seven, but I believe the childlike mindset is there.) “Axis III: Neurology” was an experiment that I’ve decided to keep. I don’t know that I actually like the idea of describing a neurologist’s visit in sonnet form; I tend to prefer writing sonnets on more romantic topics, but I wrote a long version of the same poem in free verse. I decided I preferred the sonnet for its simplicity, and I hope that the ordeal and confusion of the situation described comes through. However, I consciously chose to make “Bloodletting” a sestina for a number of reasons. First of all, I set out to write a sestina primarily because Meg Kearney included a sestina in The Secret of Me. I didn’t realize until close to the end of her poem that it was written in any particular set form because it flowed so naturally and it sounded so conversational. I went back and read it again and saw that it was, indeed, a sestina. I decided then that I wanted to write one myself. I didn’t know right away what topic I wanted to explore, but I eventually settled on self-mutilation, knowing that it deserved a prominent poem (one at least) in my thesis. It was very hard to write, since it requires six stanzas of six lines each plus one shorter stanza of three lines at the end. Each line in each stanza must end in one of six words, in a different order in every stanza. The last short stanza must include all six of those words in a particular order as well. With that in mind, I had to choose words that would make sense to repeat throughout the whole length of the poem. Nearly all of the words I chose – “choice,” “wrist,” “blood,” “relieved,” and “lesson” – are strong words that evoke strong images, especially when repeated over and over. (The word “and” was a reward of sorts to myself for being able to use the other five words in a way that made sense.) A sestina lends itself nicely to subjects like the one I picked. Because of the repetitive nature of the poem and the six words that receive special attention again and again, a sestina is a good poem to write about an obsessive act like cutting oneself. By writing “Bloodletting” as a sestina, I was able to explore again and again the disturbing thoughts I harbored as I carried out an equally disturbing act I couldn’t seem to stop.
Talking of form on a more general level, why poetry? Why couldn’t I have written prose; a collection of creative non-fiction essays or short stories and accomplished the same thing? Poetry forces me to be concise where I can get away with more verbosity in prose. Poetry requires a certain economy of language that I think lends itself particularly well to a work like this that encompasses raw emotion and stark honesty. Poetry has almost always been my means of self-expression, and it seemed fitting that this thesis – this statement of me – be written as such. While I could have easily written a short creative non-fiction essay on any one of the topics I chose to explore in verse, poetry clicked with me. William Wordsworth said that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Norton Anthology of English Literature 263). My poems are not exactly spontaneous, but I see each as a piece of my heart written onto the page, a strong emotion spun into words.
Of course, as a conscientious poet, I read other poets. I’m always careful not to copy another poet’s style directly, but I do pay attention to how other authors get their points across. I am a big fan of Sylvia Plath, so I read some of her work simply to get inspired. I’ve read a lot of John Keats this year as part of my education in English, but I love his work so much that I read it outside of my classroom obligations. I connect with his poetry on a very visceral level, and sometimes after reading a Keats ode I feel more inclined to spill my emotion out into verse. My foremost inspiration, however, has been Meg Kearney. In addition to her two poetry collections, An Unkindness of Ravens and Home by Now, she is also the author of The Secret of Me, a short novel written in verse from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old girl. Throughout most of my work, I kept The Secret of Me in mind as a standard to which to hold myself. I really admired the young narrator’s frankness, and I appreciated Kearney’s attention to form, style, and flow. I hope I have achieved the same. I have had the honor of twice meeting her and discussing my work with her. She has been an incredible inspiration to me and she helped me answer that last niggling question in the back of my head: what in the world is all of this for?
In the end, this work is about me. This is my story and it needs to be told. In many cases, these poems represent the first time I’ve talked about any of these topics outside of the confines of a journal I kept hidden in my bedroom. I call my work “No Apologies” because it is starkly honest and at times almost achingly emotional. These poems are purely me, with no mask and no shame. I make no apologies in my work because it isn’t for anyone else. People are welcome to read it, to connect with it, to enjoy it, but in the end this is my thesis: my definition.
No comments:
Post a Comment